There wasn't a whole lot of love shown Thursday night for the city of Clarksville's preliminary concepts on improvements to Tylertown and Oakland roads.

As the northeastern quadrant of the city adds rooftops exponentially, traffic congestion grows accordingly, on these mostly two-laned roads. The city says road widening and related improvements are badly needed.

But the message that seemed to reflect many, if not most residents' opinions about the city's plans, at a heavily-attended public meeting on the topic at Oakland Elementary School, could probably be summed up best in resident Ed Shope's four words:

Many residents say they don't want the growth, partly blaming new industry coming to town such as LG Electronics with its $250 million plant expected to employ about 600 people in phase 1.

And, many say they don't want the roads widened, nor do they want to give up additional right-of-way on their own property to make room for it.

Tylertown Oakland Map(Photo: Contributed)

"They're going to take all of our yards and build these roads right up to our doorsteps," Shope angrily told The Leaf-Chronicle.

The city's proposal currently calls for Tylertown Road to be widened from Trenton Road to the city limits just past Oakland Road, and Oakland would be widened from Tylertown Road to Spring Creek. The project would cover about three miles of roadway.

The city and its consultant in the effort, HDR, are in the planning process, and are collecting public comments and concerns.

There are options on the table, for example, such as including bike lanes and sidewalks in the road widening project.

Brian Trotter, project manager for HDR, led the evening presentation before an audience whose size stunned many of the city officials in attendance. It was estimated at around 150 people, and, they were passionate about the subject of growth, and growing pains.

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A large and vocal audience gathered for the public meeting on the city's proposed road improvements at Oakland and Tylertown roads.(Photo: Jimmy Settle/The Leaf-Chronicle)

Trotter noted in his remarks that the vicinity of Tylertown and Oakland roads was annexed into the Clarksville city limits in the 1990s. Since that time, it has evolved from a mostly rural, farming area into a series of subdivisions and commercially-zoned areas whose roads are overburdened, says the city.

Tylertown Road, alone, has grown from a daily traffic count of 1,400 cars per day in 2000, to about 7,700 cars daily, today. And Trotter said that number will continue to rise, rapidly.

"The tentative plan is based on 20-year traffic projections. Among our objectives with this project," Trotter said, "we propose to make provisions for pedestrians and bicycles."

Jack Frazier, engineering manager for the city Street Department, told The Leaf-Chronicle Thursday the basic components of the preliminary plan involve widening Tylertown Road to five lanes along its commercially-zoned stretch.

In the residentially-zoned area, the width of the road would be reduced to three lanes.

Intersections would be realigned for safety, and Oakland Road would become three lanes.

"As for sidewalks, curb-and-gutter and bike lanes," Frazier said, "we just want to know, do people want them? Probably so, but we'd like to hear it."

While some residents Thursday night echoed the perception that these road-widening plans were prompted by the LG project, Frazier said that's not true.

"This project was actually initiated before anyone knew anything about LG coming to town," he said. "It's just necessitated by the general growth of the area."

The project has preliminary engineering funding. There are currently no funds for additional phases including acquiring any rights-of-way. At the earliest, Trotter said Thursday, construction would begin on Oakland and Tylertown roads sometime in 2021.

Resident Lyndon Owens said he opposes the plan, because adding more traffic lanes would merely invite more traffic volume into the area.

"For me, the right thing for them to do would be to just bring a bigger police presence into our area, enforce slower traffic speeds and be more visible. All they're going to do with a road widening is open us up to more traffic and take more of our property to do it.

"Many of us don't have enough front yard as it is now," Owens said.

Other residents in the crowd were heard to say the city needs to offer more for their area in parks and public amenities for children and families, rather than widening their roads.

Chris Cowan, city traffic engineer, told The Leaf-Chronicle he is familiar with the common perception that more traffic lanes means more traffic. But he said the theory, at least in Clarksville's case, is false.

"A lot of people say, 'If you build it they will come,' when it comes to roads, but I can think of several other locations in Clarksville where the general public's complaints led to delays in widening some roads, and the higher traffic volumes still came," Cowan said.

A good case in point today, he said, is Rossview Road which is still a mostly-two-laned, and overburdened road, except for the portion near Hankook Tire and the Interstate 24 exit 8 on-and-off ramps.

Reach Business Editor Jimmy Settle at 931-245-0247 and on Twitter @settle_leaf.